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Quotes

Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

—Anacharsis, c. 550 BC

I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.

—H. Rap Brown, 1967

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

—David Foster Wallace, 2000

It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.

—Francis Bacon, 1625

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

—Horace, c. 8 BC

Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.

—Arthur Miller, 2001

The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

—Herodotus, c. 425 BC

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

—Robert Byrd, 2005

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

—Henrik Ibsen, 1882

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

—Vegetius, c. 385

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

—George Borrow, 1843